Doing an injustice to the person after the crime is committed does not make the crime any less heinous or disturbing. It just means two (three?) people have been mistreated, instead of one (or two, if you count the baby). She was in prison prior to this, and was deemed fit for parole. What does that say about the system? If you don't like the law, change it. We vote for a reason, even if it doesn't always seem that way.

This leads me slightly off topic but I feel a lot of defense attorneys need to get the damned chair too.

Yeah yeah, I know, they're doing their job, but they're fucking weasels. All I can say is that while I've had jobs in the past I hated, I've always been able to face up to the reflection in the mirror when I get up for the day. Can they say the same?

Even public defenders? I mean, a lot of the people going to trial for sick shit like that these days probably can't afford attorneys.

What makes me sick, is that something probably happened to that woman that made her snap and go nuts enough to do something like that, and whatever it was, is probably going unpunished and will likely hurt someone else in the same way. But at least the woman who committed the crime won't be able to have children now and pass on that dysfunction to another generation. Too many people are growing up in fucked-up households and are developing severe mental problems from abuse and/or neglect. People are seeking to punish these victims but not to prevent people from becoming victims, or later on, criminals. That's the cycle that will never end. Although, I'm sure a fair percent of people who are fucked in the head simply develop mental problems for no reason other than their brain chemistry having an imbalance. It's just whether they can use it in a good way or bad way (like they say Winston Churchill was crazy, but in a good way.)

I'm not a lawyer, just have an interest in the legal system. That said, I believe diminished capacity/mental deficiency defences only hold up in court if the defence can prove that the person knew what they were doing was wrong. Being crazy doesn't get you off; you have to be completely unaware that what you were doing was a) morally wrong and b) against the law. The second one is tricky in itself because it's been established that ignorance of the law is no real legal excuse (like, to state a mild example, not knowing what the speed limit was is not considered an excuse for speeding)... it's also a difficult one to defend because often people do things to try and hide the crime away ... which can be taken as proof that you knew you were doing wrong.

Anyone who's read my posts on the matter knows I do not in any way support the death penalty, but I don't disagree that this woman should be locked up for the rest of her days, either in jail or in a mental facility. Clearly that didn't happen the first time around, and there was escalation... which says to me that this woman is not going to stop if she's left out on the streets again.

Defence lawyers, on the other hand, are an essential part of the system, and should be left alone. They do a difficult job, and not all of them are scum. Not all prosecutors are angels, either.

Many years back in my more unruly days, I had to deal with one for a court case after a night of debauchery with some old highschool buddies. I found him to be an egotistical fat little, pompous shit that clearly couldn't give a single flying fuck about my case. He was just there to get it over with as fast as possible and he so much as said it directly. It was his job to represent me as a defendant at the time, and I can say that kind of 'customer service' would never have flown under any other context, if he was customer service for another company the little asshat would have been out of a job at best, at worst I would have gone off on his face with my shoe.

Whether it's a public defender from a pissant little county courthouse or high profile celebrity lawyers, they're full of themselves and think they're untouchable in their profession and can act however they like. Which of course makes them utter hypocrites given the system they're working for is trying to sentence people for the very same.

Let all the cocksuckers burn...anyone that's seen the legal system in action even peripherally knows it's a circus tent in dire need of being burnt to the ground.

I believe you can request another lawyer if your public defender is inept. Depends on your county/state laws.

That would be the reason why.

Possibly, but it's years after the fact. Problem is even in your late teens you have too many people perceiving you as 'just a kid'. There's a clear bias that they don't want to deal with you, you're not worth their time, etc., fill in the blank...

I haven't gotten that kind of prevailing attitude in years, that's one of the advantages of getting older IMHO, I believe after a point people figure out they better respect you more or they might just find out you can teach them respect. But the problem is as kids many of us lack experience and don't end up taking a stand where we definitely would have later in life.

Well given the kind of shit public defenders probably often have to deal with (I mean, let's face it, probably the worst crimes are committed by those who haven't got the money to afford private defense) and they know that most of the people they're defending are guilty as hell and probably think they're scumbags. But they have to hold that shit in and smile. How would you like doing that, day in and day out, and try keeping a sunny disposition? Granted, that particular Public Defender might have just been an asshole in every facet of his life. But that's like becoming a teacher if you hate kids; some people just DO that kind of thing even knowing it's a bad idea, just for the money or because it's all they can do. That, or they like being assholes. But obviously that's a minority of people. Don't try to say all of them are like that. My mom had a really good public defender even though what he was defending her over was something she was guilty of, and mentally idiotic or not, she knew damn well what she was doing when it happened.

The problem with the justice system isn't people, it's time and volume. There are too many people needing to be processed in too short of time. They can't have full treatment given and a lot of them plea bargain out and because of their record, can't get a job and therefore turn right back to crime, or never get out at all. I am fully in favor of the death penalty but with all the appeals and everything, it takes forever for a guy to get killed and in the meantime it's costing us millions in tax money keeping them fed and sheltered.

If someone is mentally fucked up enough, I can sympathize with them to a point. If they can understand their crimes and show remorse, be rehabilitated and start contributing to society, I can forgive that kind of offense. But usually, I admit, they'll try to bullshit their way out of it and play their mental illness off as a complete excuse which ain't right. At that point, yeah, burn 'em.

Justice really needs to be more cut and dry. I really think we ought to go back to using whipping and other kinds of torturous penalties as punishments. Someone goes through that, they will NOT want to have it happen again. Whereas spending a couple of days/weeks/months in prison isn't really all that big a deal to a lot of people. So not only would it be a lot cheaper in the long run, I think it would be a hell of a lot more effective in stamping out repeat offenders. Fuck the Eighth Amendment.

This might be the same crime I'd heard about a while back, but I've heard of a couple cases like this where a woman was murdered in the late stages of pregnancy and/or just after she gave birth, and another woman passing the baby off as hers. A couple were linked to a failed pregnancy of the murder, which adds another layer of "Yeeeeeeesh...."-ness to the whole thing.

This might be the same crime I'd heard about a while back, but I've heard of a couple cases like this where a woman was murdered in the late stages of pregnancy and/or just after she gave birth, and another woman passing the baby off as hers. A couple were linked to a failed pregnancy of the murder, which adds another layer of "Yeeeeeeesh...."-ness to the whole thing.

Yeah, I remember hearing a couple of years ago about a woman who kidnapped and murdered a woman who was in labor and tried to say the baby was hers. But obviously, if she had been pregnant, they'd have known.

There's also been incidents of mothers being kidnapped and given a hack job C-section (which they survived and waking up in pain with their baby gone). It's so sad. Most of these women seem to have gone crazy after loosing a baby to MC.

Something like this is an act of sheer malice. Donít give me any of that legally insane crap either; if you're too fucked in the head to realize this is straight evil, you don't need to be polluting the planet as anything but fertilizer.

This happens frequently... women will have "phantom pregnancies" and believe that they are pregnant just for the attention a pregnant woman gets - they'll even grow bellies of water weight they're so convinced. Of course when month 9 rolls around... what do you do? A lot of them are so messed in the head they think they can take another woman's infant. One of them got away with it after cutting a woman's baby out with car keys and then taking it home.

It's total psychosis. It doesn't make it right at all, but it happens a scary amount.

And I still maintain that a lot of it is the result of how they've been treated (or rather, mistreated.) People just need to be fucking nicer to each other, I mean, it seems sometimes like it would really kill someone to go out of their way to be friendly to someone else. That's pathetic. Every time I see something like this happen, I'm like, "Look at that...someone out there is responsible for that, in some small way, for driving that person to the brink like that, and so is everyone else, who interacted in a negative way towards them."

I used to be a really negative person but I'm trying to look at the world in a different way now. I don't want to turn into one of those people who snaps and starts victimizing others. I think every person has a breaking point, though, and that most of the time, it's an external force that finally tears it. Don't be one of those contributing factors.